Overcooked: Special Edition Review – Goodbye, Relationships!

Are you looking for a fun way to wash dirty dishes? Or maybe you’re looking for a special place to cook and serve food to non-existent customers? Or maybe you’re just simply looking for a way to keep all of your friends away from you for all of your life?

Well, it’s time to stop looking. Overcooked is here to satisfy your cravings! However, salt comes with extra pay.

Overcooked is a cooking simulator better played with friends (or enemies – your call). You take on the roles of a chef in kitchens that defy the logic of having a restaurant. You chop/boil vegetables, meat, and ̶(̶s̶o̶m̶e̶t̶i̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶t̶e̶a̶m̶m̶a̶t̶e̶s̶)̶ a whole lot of different ingredients to serve foodies. All these while also avoiding death from falling in-between trucks or getting your products robbed by rats.

All I’m saying is, Overcooked is a mess. But it’s the kind of mess you’d want to get into because it’s a big, fun mess. Overcooked’s enjoyable, but it’s also really hard. Even when playing with (up to three) real people.

Overcooked barely has a story, but who cares when you’ve got tons of quick, pick-up and play gameplay, anyway? You start as a hero out to save the world – by feeding a giant spaghetti beast all the dishes you can make. After the Onion King Mayor tells you the monster isn’t satisfied, you are then warped back in time to prepare yourself for the inevitable apocalypse.

You and your co-chefs travel around the world in a van and are tasked to cook meals in short amounts of time. Every area is a kitchen made in hell. Doing better than 99% of the human gamers, in general, earns you three stars. With the difficulty being harder in each level, requiring you to unlock at least one star to progress is a gift from the heavens (read: the developers). But sometimes, even getting one star is hard to achieve. Especially if you’re playing with dorks who know nothing about the concept of time and the importance of clean dishes.

Levels vary differently from each other, with their own themes (and tortures). One round you’re in an ever-tilting boat (motion sickness included), the next you’re on a kitchen split inside two trucks. The challenges are even harder than the levels. One level has you keeping the rats away from your delicacies, while one stage has you navigate floating icebergs to prepare your food.

In the beginning, the meals are simple, with three-ingredient vegetable soups. These later evolve into harder-to-cook burritos, pizzas, and *shudder* hamburgers. Making them also gets more difficult. With soups, you only have to get an item, chop it up, cook it in the bowl, and deliver the dish to the counter. The other delicacies, however, have you multitasking. For example, hamburgers have you preparing the buns and cooking the meat, while also chopping the lettuce and onions. Don’t forget to avoid certain doom while doing these, too, because that will surely eat a lot of time. Oh, and keep an eye on that ordered food list. Delivering the wrong one subtracts points.

However hard these may all sound, Overcooked is actually a pretty simple game. It’s easy to learn with just one button to do all the things from gathering items to extinguishing the fire you make with your little happy accidents. Oh, and also to clean the dirty dishes. With the additional dash button, you can bump against your teammates just for the heck of it.

During later levels, however, things get stressful when tasks start to pile up.

Overcooked is a great way to spend time with your friends anytime, anywhere. Even in a cafe. Just try putting your Switch on a table and hand out the Joycons to random people (if you’re alone), and everyone will join in on the fun. Feel like living in a Nintendo Switch commercial.

Overcooked isn’t for those who like to only play alone. It kills the whole essence of the game. When playing solo, you get to control two chefs, but only one at a time. Taking command of one makes the other useless. Switching characters is only practical in certain situations where the kitchen is big and is difficult to navigate from one side to the other. Worst of all, you won’t have anyone to blame when you fail a level.

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